The demand for higher communication throughput and at the same time for a lower communication bandwidth cost is ever increasing. In the recent years more Medium Earth Orbit (“MEO”) and Low Earth Orbit (“LEO”) communication satellites are being launched or under planning. A LEO is an orbit around Earth with an altitude between 160 kilometers, with an orbital period of about 88 minutes, and 2,000 kilometers with an orbital period of about 127 minutes, whereas a MEO satellite is one having an orbit within the. range from a few hundred miles to a few thousand miles above the earth's surface, below geostationary orbit (altitude of 35,786 kilometers).
Another type of platforms being used is a High-Altitude Platform (“HAP”) which is a quasi-stationary aircraft that provides means of delivering a service to a large area while remaining in the air at an altitude of 10-14 miles, for long periods of time.
Unfortunately, only the fastest and most expensive azimuth-elevation pedestals used in the industry are capable of continuously tracking satellites on high elevation passes. The problem occurs typically when the satellite approaches or departs from its highest elevation. At this point, the pedestal must carry out high speed azimuth movements under high acceleration forces in order to track the satellite while insufficient azimuth speed results in the earth station being unable to track the satellite continuously for passes that exceed a certain maximum elevation. Several methods have been suggested in the past in order to overcome this problem, including trajectory optimization where the antenna trajectory is modified to minimize antenna pointing losses on or near zenith passes:    1. Elevation over Azimuth Pedestal—(illustrated in FIG. 1) in such cases the azimuthal speed is usually the limiting factor that prevents zenith tracking of a LEO satellite, therefore it is not suitable for communications with LEO satellites; and    2. Elevation over Azimuth over Tilt Pedestal—(illustrated in FIG. 2) in such cases the third axis provides the ability of zenith tracking, but as this solution dictates the use of three motors, it increases the mass, volume and cost associated with such a station.